Bird lover set to fight littering charge at trial

Adrienne Packer

Wednesday, Sept. 2, 1998 | 10:59 a.m.

As national news cameras focus on a high-profile murder trial in downtown this week, Marion Goodwin will shuffle into a North Las Vegas courtroom virtually unnoticed.

But this case means everything to Goodwin, which is why he has spent hours plotting his defense and scoffs at any suggestion of a plea bargain agreement.

Goodwin is North Las Vegas' repeat bird-feeding offender. He's been arrested twice by the city's finest -- the last time his bird scratch was confiscated and his van was impounded.

Some thought Goodwin's case would be settled quickly, but the 77-year-old war veteran is set to go to trial at 3 p.m. Thursday.

Goodwin was arrested May 25 by North Las Vegas police officer Philip Hicks on suspicion of littering. Hicks spotted Goodwin scattering bird seed in a vacant lot and called a backup officer to take photographs.

Despite his growing rap sheet, Goodwin swears he won't stop feeding the birds. He refuses to let some cop stop him from doing what he promised his father he'd always do: Take care of pigeons.

When American troops prepared to fire on a battalion thought to be Germans in World War II, it was a carrier pigeon that delivered the battalion's message identifying itself.

And it was his father's carrier pigeons' young -- a delicacy called squab -- that fed Goodwin's family and their neighbors during the Great Depression.

"He was the only one who raised them," Goodwin recalls. "Food was scarce and expensive. They provided many a good meal for us and some neighbors. These are wonderful birds."

Goodwin promised to always take care of the birds and has taken time to feed them during visits to Rome and London.

He has even converted one room in his home to a makeshift medical unit. Goodwin cares for birds with incurable diseases and those that have been wounded. Not all make it, but at least their death is painless, he said.

"Sometimes they live a day, sometimes a week," Goodwin said. "At least they are not run over by a car or eaten by a cat. They have a more comfortable death."